BySamsung has locked in its next Galaxy Unpacked for July 22, and for the first time it’s holding the show in London instead of Seoul or New York.
The official invite, posted to Samsung’s Newsroom on July 8, carries the tagline “A New Shape Unfolds” and an animation of a printed ticket tearing along its top edge to reveal a wider, shorter silhouette.
The keynote streams at 9 a.m. EDT (2 p.m. BST) on Samsung.com, Newsroom, and YouTube.
That shape in the teaser is the whole story.
For seven years, “Fold” meant one thing
Since 2019, a Galaxy Z Fold has been a tall, narrow phone that opens into a nearly square tablet. This year Samsung is splitting that idea in two.
Leaks from multiple tipsters, plus evidence pulled from Samsung’s own firmware, point to two book-style foldables launching side by side, with the names reshuffled in a way that trips up anyone not paying close attention.
The traditional tall Fold, the direct heir to last year’s Fold 7, is reportedly now the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. The plain Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a brand-new wide, shorter design. So the cheaper-sounding name belongs to the new experiment, and “Ultra” is the familiar one. If that feels backwards, it is.
Leaked cases lined up three distinct phones rather than variants of one: a wide Fold, a standard Fold, and the next Flip. As The Gadgeteer pointed out, accessory leaks tend to be trustworthy because a case has to fit real hardware.
They read as confirmation that Samsung is done pretending a single Fold shape works for everyone.
What the wide Fold 8 actually changes
The wide Fold’s numbers are strange in a good way. Dimensions shared by tipster Ahmed Qwaider, and echoed by others, put it near 123.9mm tall and 161.4mm wide when open. That makes it wider than it is tall, an unusual proportion for a book-style phone.
SamMobile reported the same figures after Sonny Dickson published photos of design prototypes lined up next to the standard Fold and Flip.
That geometry produces a roughly 7.6-inch inner display in a 4:3 tablet shape, instead of the almost-square panel on the Fold 7. The cover screen sits around 5.5 inches. It’s built for reading, video, and split-screen apps, where a squarer screen wastes room.
Two more things stand out. The wide Fold is reportedly just 4.5mm thick unfolded and around 201g, lighter than plenty of ordinary glass-slab phones. And Samsung appears to have closed the crease gap, with several leakers describing it as on par with Oppo’s Find N6, long treated as the class leader on that front.
How did Samsung get this thin? TheElec traced it to two changes that began with the Fold SE: dropping the S Pen digitizer, which removed a thin layer on each side of the panel, and moving the backplate to titanium once the stylus hardware was gone.
Inside, leaks point to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 12GB of RAM, and a 4,800mAh battery with 45W charging. Samsung has officially confirmed that both the Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra use that chip.
The catch: the wide Fold reportedly carries a simpler dual 50MP camera, while the Fold 8 Ultra keeps a triple array built around a 200MP main sensor, per SamMobile. So the roomier screen costs you camera hardware.
Leaker Ice Universe also claims none of the new foldables will inherit the anti-peek privacy display from the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which would be a real omission on phones this expensive.
Flip 8, two watches, and a pair of glasses
The Galaxy Z Flip 8 looks like the most modest update of the three: slimmer, lighter at roughly 180g, with a redesigned hinge said to reduce the crease further. The bigger question is whether it’s the last one.
Tom’s Guide and several tippers have floated that Samsung may wind the clamshell down to concentrate on wide foldables, though the company hasn’t confirmed it. If that rumor holds, the Flip 8 still ships with seven years of updates, keeping it current through 2033.
Two watches are expected: the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. The change worth watching is under the hood, a move to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite chip, reportedly the first processor architecture shift in the line since it launched in 2018.
The Ultra 2 is also tipped to jump to a 784mAh battery, up about 33% from the original’s 590mAh, aimed straight at the first model’s weakest point.
Then there’s the wildcard: Samsung’s first Galaxy Glasses, an Android XR device running Google’s Gemini, with cameras and microphones but no display. It’s a direct answer to Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses.
Leaked pricing sits around $379 to $499, above Meta’s $299 starting point, and the deeper Google Maps and Android integration is the pitch for the gap.
The real story is the price
Here’s the part that matters if you’re actually buying. Samsung’s 2026 foldables are getting more expensive, and it’s mostly not Samsung’s call.
The cause is a memory shortage. AI data centers are buying so much high-bandwidth memory that the ordinary LPDDR5X chips inside phones have gone scarce and pricey.
TechTimes cited research from SigmaIntel showing mobile DRAM prices climbed 89% quarter-over-quarter in Q2 2026, and Gartner doesn’t forecast relief before late 2027. Apple’s Tim Cook reportedly likened the crunch to a “100-year flood.”
The leaked numbers reflect that pressure. The Korea Herald, citing Bloter, reported the Flip 8 rising about 13% over the Flip 7, with a base Korean price near 1.68 million won (roughly $1,100).
Germany’s WinFuture reported the 1TB Fold 8 Ultra reaching €2,799. Samsung appears to be holding the base 256GB Fold at close to the Fold 7’s old $1,999, then loading the increase onto higher-storage tiers, where memory costs weigh most.
Treat every figure as directional. Samsung won’t confirm real prices until July 22. But the direction is clear, and it’s up. The company quietly added $80 to existing Fold 7 configurations in the US back in April, and co-CEO T.M. Roh called price increases “inevitable” back in January.
For a buyer tempted to wait it out, the uncomfortable truth is that these increases are structural, not seasonal. A Fold bought in six months won’t be cheaper, because the memory market won’t have recovered.
The one lever tilted toward buyers
Samsung has already opened reservations, and that’s the closest thing to a break on offer. Signing up ahead of the show gets you a small accessory credit (around $30) and entry into a sweepstakes for one of ten $500 Samsung.com gift cards, per Samsung’s reservation page.
The company is also advertising up to $1,230 in combined savings once pre-order and trade-in offers stack during the ordering window, alongside a $200 credit toward extra devices when you skip a trade-in.
None of that touches the list price. But with the memory shortage keeping sticker prices high, the launch-window promos are where the real discount lives, and that credit usually only appears in the pre-order window Samsung opens on event day.
The reservation sweepstakes itself runs through 9 a.m. EDT on July 22, which tells you exactly when Samsung wants you committed.
Why London, why now
The venue is a tell. Moving Unpacked to London, roughly two months before Apple’s expected foldable iPhone in September, reads as Samsung trying to own the wide-foldable conversation in Europe before Cupertino gets a say.
Samsung has shipped book-style foldables for seven years. Apple hasn’t shipped one at all. This is the window to define what “wide foldable” means before the framing becomes Apple’s.
The open question is whether buyers will pay more for a phone with a bigger screen and fewer cameras. Samsung is betting the shape matters more than the spec sheet.
Right now the pre-launch buzz is running almost entirely on the new shape and the reservation deals, while the price story sits quietly underneath it. That gap closes on July 22, when pre-orders open and those leaked numbers either hold or don’t.
